


The haunting

by lisachan



Series: Leoverse [316]
Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisachan/pseuds/lisachan
Summary: Blaine and Leo buy a new house to move in with the children, but something feels strange to Leo right from the get-go. The house seems to have a voice that she speaks with only to Leo, which makes her terrifying, which makes her interesting. And so, despite the initial hesitations, they decide to stay and get to know her better.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Leoverse [316]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541
Collections: COWT - Clash Of the Writing Titans/Chronicles Of Words and Trials





	The haunting

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is a **what if** from the original 'verse. In the canon course of events that followed the beginning of Broken Heart Syndrome, **this has never happened**.

_This is not a ghost story. It’s a love story._

When they first enter the house, Leo immediately senses that something’s off with the building, and he honestly can’t quite understand how. He’s never been particularly sensitive, in that regard, he usually struggles to even read the room when actual people living, breathing, smiling, speaking and getting angry are involved, let alone understand places where nothing visible is apparently happening. And yes he can feel something misplaced, perhaps something that shouldn’t be here and yet it is, or the contrary, something that should be instead is not.

As the realtor guides Blaine and him through the rooms of the house, he keeps looking behind every corner and opening every door, thoroughly expecting to find someone waiting specifically for _him_ behind them, but each and every time his expectations are denied, and he finds himself somehow disappointed.

“As you can see, the ground floor has been redesigned into an open space. You have your entire living area right downstairs, with the kitchen over there on the left, with access to the backyard through a floor-to-ceiling glass door, and the sitting room on your right. All furniture is Italian, that one’s a Boffi kitchen.”

Leo looks at it and, even though the kitchen usually is the core of the house for him, he can’t see the value of the brand the realtor mentioned. He’s always been quite ignorant in that matter. Sure, it’s a beautiful kitchen, but not any more beautiful than the other they had in their previous home. 

Blaine, on the other hand, immediately lets out an appreciative sound, and smiles brightly. “Truly amazing,” he says, “The house has been decorated with incredible taste.”

“That is why I thought it’d be right for you,” the realtor nods and smiles, “I immediately got you could have an eye for design objects.”

Blaine laughs, minimizing. “Mind me, I’m no expert. But I like beauty, and over the course of my life I have come to find out that no one has quite the same talent for beauty that Italian designers have. I would go as far as to say, actually, that almost everything truly beautiful I’ve seen in my life came from Italy, one way or another.”

Leo walks closer to the kitchen, detaching himself from his husband and the realtor. He touches the top of the kitchen isle, its opaque obsidian surface and the dark gray metal details of the sink, and a voice in the back of his mind, a voice he himself barely hears and chooses not to address anyway, mirrors his husband’s last words. _Everything truly beautiful I’ve seen in my life came from Italy, one way or another._ In the beginning he just thinks of Costa Smeralda and that last summer he spent there with his parents and Blaine, when his body found a way, through rage, to make him understand that he thought of Blaine in different terms than he thought he did, but then another kind of thought slithers between his memories, and suddenly all he can see is blue eyes turned glassy, and with a gasp he stops touching the kitchen and backs away a step or two.

“Babe?” Blaine calls him from the other side of the room. Leo lifts his eyes on him and the realtor standing next to him, blinking unfocusedly. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” he swallows and hastens to say. He looks back at the kitchen isle, and he immediately puts his hand back on it, used as he is, now, to face weirdness as soon as it hits him. He searches for the same feeling that so violently shook him before, but he feels nothing, and his heartbeat slows down as he relaxes. “Sorry, I thought I saw something, but there’s nothing here.”

“Oh,” Blaine walks closer to him in big, confidence steps, looking down at the kitchen isle surface too, “Perhaps a play of light?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” the realtor says with a smile, “The glass door over there favors them. If you tried putting something that could reflect light over that glass you’d have a kitchen constantly covered in rainbows during summer.”

Blaine chuckles and holds Leo’s hand, squeezing it tenderly. “Sounds appropriate,” he says. “Do you like it, love?”

Once again, Leo takes a look at the whole ground floor, that he can see from where he stands. The kitchen’s huge, the furniture’s beautiful, he thinks the glass door opening into the terrace would be a favorite of the kids and the house is enormous, perfect for their needs. “I like it,” he says tentatively, looking up at Blaine, “Do you?”

Blaine’s whole face lightens up. He’s already been here with the realtor, before he decided to bring Leo along. He’s seen several houses in the past few weeks, but this is the only one he chose to show to Leo too. This alone would’ve had to make clear enough what he thinks about it, but if Leo needed any further clarification the smile on his face right now would seal the deal anyway. “I love it!” he says, as a matter of fact, “And wait until you see upstairs. There’s plenty of rooms for everything we need.”

“Yes,” the realtor confirms, “The previous owner chose to leave upstairs as it had been originally designed, creating an interesting contrast between classic and modern styles. Follow me, please.”

They follow the man diligently, and he proceeds to show them the abundance of rooms of the first floor. There are four bedrooms, which means they’d have an extra guest room right now that could easily be transformed in a room for Harper or Logan when they’re old enough not to want to share the same room any longer. The master bedroom has a built-in walk-in closet and a private bathroom, and there’s another bedroom with a private bathroom down the hallway that could easily be the guest bedroom or Timmy’s bedroom if he feels like he can’t be bothered to use the bathroom on the other end of the hallway. And there’s a spare room with plenty of plugs that could be perfect to turn into Leo’s studio-slash-media room.

The house truly is perfect, perhaps even _too_ perfect. Leo feels like it’s showing off for them, somehow, like some people do when they know they have to make a good first impression. Every detail they focus on seems to have been specifically fitted for their needs, from the number of plugs in every room to the pain color on every wall. 

And yet, Leo keeps walking from one room into another feeling like there’s something misplaced. And the feeling becomes even more jarring upstairs, where there’s no furniture except for the bathrooms. And Leo struggles to understand the feeling, too, because it’s not as though he feels like there’s something specifically _wrong_ with the place. He doesn’t feel threatened, or under immediate danger, even though he has to admit that his self-preservation instinct has never been particularly reliable and could therefore be tricking him.

But no, it feels different. The thing following him doesn’t feel evil or bad. But it is there, and it seems to be there for him.

He doesn’t know if he should run away from it or face it like all the weird things Blaine always insists on him to face.

“I guess you will need a few days to think about it,” the realtor say as he guides them back downstairs and to the front door, “You have my number and should you have any other question—”

“When could we move in?” he hears himself say.

Both Blaine and the realtor turn to look at him, blinking rapidly. “Um…” the realtor exchange a quick look with Blaine, and then looks back to him. “Well, the house is free and ready. You could move in tomorrow, if you were so inclined.”

Leo barely waits for the man to finish the sentence. “We’ll take it,” he says. Then and only then, after he spoke the words, he hesitates and turns towards Blaine, looking uncertainly at him. “Can we?” he asks.

Blaine looks at him, slightly taken aback, but then he laughs and wraps an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him close. “Of course we can, kid,” he chuckles, “I love it, and you clearly have very intense feelings towards it. I think we found it.”

The realtor clearly did not expect such a favorable outcome almost from the get-go, and his joyful expression is so sudden and honest it forces a chuckle out of Leo’s mouth too. “That’s amazing!” he says, “I will contact the owner immediately and start preparing all the necessary papers. I cannot promise you will be in this house tomorrow, but chances are you might be all set and ready for your new life here in a couple of weeks. Does that sound okay?”

“It sounds perfect,” Blaine says, releasing Leo from his hug to reach out and shake the realtor’s hand. They walk off, talking business – money and contracts and all those bureaucratic details Leo usually chooses not to deal with at all – leaving him behind, alone with the house. He turns around to look at him, shoulders to the door, and he feels something pushing him further inside, like the lightest pressure of tiny, delicate hands on his shoulder blades.

He takes a step forward, then two. He turns right and explores the sitting room, the beautiful dark gray fabric couch that will put a final tombstone on Logan and Harper’s wish for a pet cat and Blaine’s discreet but expectant desire to fulfill it, the exquisitely designed wooden wall system with its huge ass TV, the empty libraries seemingly waiting to fill themselves up with their books, the marble table, big enough for them all and all the guests they could possibly imagine, surrounded with the design chairs that seem to be magically standing up on two feet only.

It’s weird, because when he looks at the furniture he feels nothing for it. He feels no connection, no particular liking or disliking, for that matter. They’re just objects, functional, well-designed, surely very decorative. But there’s no attachment to them, and it shouldn’t seem surprising, because he hasn’t had a chance to use them yet, he hasn’t spent a single hour with them, after all, how could he be supposed to feel anything towards them? And yet, the feeling the house in its entirety gives him is so intense that it seems strange not to feel anything towards the single objects that make her up.

He sits down on the couch to try it, and it’s soft, and it seems comfortable, and then he hears something – an unintelligible whisper behind himself, and he springs back on his feet, turning around, breathing heavily. “Is there someone in here?” he asks, even though he feels stupid for asking. There can be no one, here, he knows that very well. And yet someone whispered something, of that he’s sure. And he can’t stop thinking perhaps it was the house.

Why did he tell the realtor they would take the house right away? He didn’t even give himself the chance to talk about it with Blaine, or to at least show Timmy and the kids a picture. He thinks about himself saying the words, _we’ll take it_ , and he hears his own voice in his head, and did he even sound like himself? So confident and straightforward, like he used to be before, before the breakdown. Like he used to be in college. 

Once again, he feels hands on his back. They’re small and featherweight, at first, but then something changes, and they become stronger, and he realizes it’s Blaine hugging him. He can smell him, feel him. He closes his eyes and inhales him, and he feels fine again. And he tries telling himself that the little hands he felt before must’ve been Blaine hands too, before they were fully on him, but the same part of himself that’s trying to tell the lie knows it _is_ a lie.

“Hey,” his husband says, his lips pressed gently against his scalp, “Didn’t notice you were still in here, sorry I left you behind.”

“Don’t be silly,” Leo chuckles, leaning back against him, trusting with utter certainty that Blaine will hold him up, “It’s okay.”

“You sure?” Blaine asks, squeezing him a little tighter, “You seemed strange, before. Are you sure you like this house?”

“Honestly?” Leo chuckles uneasily, “No. I feel for it, though. There’s something in here.”

“Something?”

“Yeah… don’t mind me, I’m babbling,” he chuckles again, “Doesn’t it feel like it’s alive?”

Blaine hesitates for a moment. Leo can feel the cogs in his brain turn furiously, trying to get up to date with what he’s thinking might be Leo’s thought process on the matter. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he chooses to say in the end, “But it’s true that houses are very similar to living beings. Maybe I just don’t know her enough, yet.”

Leo nods, looking back at the sitting room. It looks more beautiful by the minute, to his eyes. “I think that’s it,” he says, “I think the house introduced herself to me a moment ago. It told me something but I couldn’t hear it properly. So… maybe I don’t love her, and maybe I don’t even like her, but I’m sure I wanna get to know her better.”

“I see,” Blaine nods, “Like a first date. It’s gonna be quite an expensive first date, though,” Blaine chuckles, “And a lengthy one. If we buy her, we’re in it for at least a little while.”

Leo takes a second to think about it, to really let the house sink in for a moment. He also gives her a chance to speak again, but she chooses shyness, for the moment. “Tell me something and be honest about it. If we buy it and then we don’t like it and in a year or so we want to sell it and buy a new one, would that be a problem?”

“Mmh,” Blaine tilts his head, swinging right and left with him for a moment as he considers the idea. “It surely wouldn’t be ideal. Certainly wouldn’t be easy. But it wouldn’t be a _problem_ , no.”

The privilege, Leo thinks as he turns around in his arms and wraps his own around Blaine’s neck, pulling him slightly down for a kiss. “Then I want my lengthy and expensive first date,” he says.

Blaine laughs against his lips as he kisses him again. “Let’s hope you end up liking each other.”

*

Two weeks later, they’re in the middle of the move, and there’s almost a dozen people roaming through the house. Blaine is directing the movers around, telling them where to put every piece of furniture to reassemble it right where it’s going to remain, while Timmy chose for himself the role of the box master. He was the one who helped Leo the most while they were packing up, and he helped him keep a neat and very specific list of every box in terms of number and objects it contains. He’s very proud of the job he’s done, and he’s been over that list so many times, to make sure nothing was missing, that at some point for a few days before the actual move Leo and him started to play a ridiculous game they ridiculously called Guess the Box, during which Leo would shout from one corner of the house a question such as “Where did we put the lava lamps?” or “Where did we put my Homestuck figurines?”, and Timmy would invariably respond from the opposite corner of the house with the exact number of the box where that specific object had been packed in. Soon enough, the twins joined in, even though they had no idea where things had actually been stored, so they shouted random numbers which, sometimes, they didn’t even have. Logan got fixated on number 245, at some point, and Leo and Timmy both had quite a hard time explaining to him that their boxes were 176 in total, and therefore there was no number 245. (Leo thinks he got the basic information, in the end, but he kept shouting the number anyway, perhaps just because he liked it.)

Timmy and the twins are very busy helping the movers place the boxes in the rooms where they’re eventually going to be unpacked, and this leaves Leo with not much to do. He was the one primarily in charge of the packing, but he’s got no role for himself now, so he takes the chance to roam through the house again, especially since he hasn’t been here in quite some time. He’s visited for a couple hours last week to show it to the kids, sure, but they were so enthused and they made so much noise that the house understandably preferred to remain quiet. Now, there’s a lot of noise today too, but Leo’s hoping that if he walks these rooms alone perhaps at some point it’ll be quiet enough for the house to decide to speak again.

There’s only quiet in what is going to become the master bedroom. The movers already put all the furniture in it, they reassembled everything, hanged the mirror to the wall and left. Everything’s a little bit dusty, but other than that the room looks exactly as it was in their old house. He moves to the next one – that’s going to be Timmy’s. His desk has already been placed close to the huge window that pours liquid gold in the shape of sunlight inside, and there are two people working on his closet, while two more are working on his container bed, with Blaine directing them all with a huge, confident smile on his face. He seems to know precisely where everything goes, which is astounding, to Leo, considering that the mapping of the constellations of furniture that decorated their old house is already starting to fade from his own memory.

He moves on to another room, because there are too many people in this one and it’s unlikely the house is gonna say anything with so many witnesses. He enters into one of the two bedrooms the doors of which are so close they almost look like they could’ve been one room that the previous owner later decided to split into two. This, he thinks, looking at the pale yellow walls, is probably going to be the twins’ bedroom, but as soon as he takes two steps into it he hears something coming from the one wall this room has in common with the one right next to it.

It’s the same kind of whispering he heard when he visited for the first time, except it sounds a little clearer here than it sounded downstairs, even though not clear enough to really decipher words in it. He rushes to the wall, gluing his ear to it, hoping no one walks in to find him in such a ridiculous position – he wouldn’t know how to justify that. The voice whispers again, it sounds exactly as though there was a person standing on the other side of this wall, speaking with his mouth pressed against it. 

And the voice says _come_.

Leo throws himself out of the room, grabs the doorframe to use it as a cornerstone around which he rotates to launch himself into the other room, but either it’s too late, or there never was a person in here, or if there is then it lives inside the wall, because Leo can see no one, and there’s no audible whispering anymore.

He still enters the room, frowning. This makes no sense – he knows what he heard. The word sounded clear to his ears. He couldn’t really recognize the voice, but he could make sense of it, somehow, even if he wouldn’t be able to explain it.

He places a hand against the wall and keeps walking, feeling the smoothness of the surface underneath his fingers. The wall feels cold and generally unremarkable, and Leo feels disappointed.

“Leo!” Timmy shouts, invading the room, “There you are!”

Leo removes the hand from the wall, turning around to look at him. Timmy looks all ruffled up and he’s panting visibly, and his brother and sister are sitting one on each of his huge feet, their arms and legs wrapped around his legs.

Leo arches an eyebrow. “Did you run all the way up the stairs like this?” he asks.

“Yes,” Timmy answers plainly, “We’ve got a problem.”

“You most certainly do.”

“No!” Timmy wails, removing the twins from himself. As soon as they’re feet on the ground, they throw their arms up in the air and run out of the room, roaming the hallways, “I can’t find box number 32.”

Leo frowns again. “What was in box number 32?”

“All of your first editions.”

Leo’s eyes open wide as he holds his breath. Suddenly, he’s not interested in the voice of the house any longer. He runs downstairs with Timmy and immediately starts arguing with the movers, trying to understand if they misplaced the box or if there’s a chance they left it at their old house.

Agitated talking covers any other noise, and soon enough Blaine and the other movers join them downstairs to make sure they help finding the lost box. But the room upstairs stays silent, all stranger sounds locked out of it, as though the door was closed, even though it isn’t. And in the silence of the room, the smallest crack opens in the plastered and painted wall, and the small voice behind it asks _why did you leave?_.

*

The first and second and third nights in the new house are silent and motionless. The whole family spends the remaining half day after the movers have gone and the subsequent two days unpacking everything – books, clothes, cutlery, a shameful amount of toys and games – and putting it back where it belongs, and each and every night they fall on the bed exhausted and aching for sleep so bad they all fall into deep slumber three seconds after their heads hit the pillows – even Timmy, who usually struggles to fall asleep right away and normally needs to stay up exercising with his earbuds sinking deep into his skull to listen to some music for an hour or so before he can finally turn himself off for the night.

The fourth night, though, is different. The kids go back to school and Blaine leaves behind a perfectly tidy and spotless house to go meet with his agent in New York City, after he literally ghosted her for almost three weeks before, during and after the move, and Leo’s left home by himself, to roam the rooms and hallways, listening to the silence, hoping to hear her voice once again.

He hears nothing, though. And once again, he’s disappointed. “Hey,” he says after half an hour of aimless wondering, “Listen. I’ve moved in here because I thought you sounded interesting, you know? It certainly wasn’t your looks. So talk to me again, okay? I’m listening.”

But perhaps the house is not listening any longer, because she answers nothing. Leo huffs and puffs and lets it go, burying himself in his studio to sort out all the unanswered emails and unread notifications that have been piling up in his email account for the last few days. 

It’s a draining activity, mentally speaking. Leo tries not to ever leave more than a couple dozens emails unread in his account because the process of sorting through them, archive the important ones, throw away the useless ones and, most importantly, answer those that need to be answered, wears him out more than unbroken, continuous six-hours writing sessions. 

By 7 PM he’s finally done, his email account is clean again and he has penned down a hypothetical but realistic enough schedule of things to do to get back into normal working routine starting from tomorrow. Around 1 PM the kids all got back from their respective schools – Timmy was kind enough to go fetch the twins before he headed home – and they spent the afternoon playing and doing their homework, and they behaved so nicely (which is a thing they always do when Blaine’s not around) that Leo decides they deserve a nice meal, so he orders four pizzas on Uber Eats. They wolf them down with a bottle of coke and by 8.45 PM they’re already in bed, the twins sleeping soundly, Timmy struggling with the last of his homework as he prepares for a test for tomorrow while Leo watches random shit on the TV to keep himself company. He doesn’t particularly like to sleep by himself, but Blaine will be back tomorrow, and if he concentrates on that he can make it through the night, he knows that.

He must have fallen asleep without noticing, at some point, because he wakes up in the middle of the night and the TV is already off – putting a timer on it was a smart move. He feels a little confused and a little more tired than he hoped he’d be after a few good hours of sleep. 

He reaches out for his phone and turns it on to take a look at the hour. 2.48 says the display, after blinding him for a second. It’s much too early to get up, and yet he doesn’t feel particularly sleepy any longer. Tired, yes, sleepy? Not so much.

Sighing wearily, he drags himself off the bed. He feels like getting something sweet to snack on, and he remembers they’ve got chocolate covered cookies down in the biscuit bowl. He ends up thinking of Cody, as he always does whenever he finds himself craving for chocolate, and as always the thought of him gives his heart what he calls a _cramp_. He’s well aware hearts can’t have cramps, but hearts are muscles, after all, and there’s no other words he could describe this specific kind of pain with.

Cody was his boyfriend in college. He was for nine months, in the gap between Blaine and Blaine again. He was the most intense relationship Leo ever had, beside Blaine himself, and he was everything to him, back then. Cody was this incredibly fragile, adorable creature who carried on his shoulders much more weight than his shoulders were prepared to bear, and yet he hid in himself much more strength than anyone else would’ve thought looking at him, and that’s probably the main reason why Leo loved him so deeply. Sure, there were other things – Cody looked stunning, and he was incredibly sexy, and they were so in tune it sometimes felt like Cody’s body was singing songs only Leo could write for him, but at the core of it all it was the ambivalence between Cody’s exterior fragility and his inner strength that captivated Leo so much.

When Blaine came back into his life, and they mended their relationship, somehow managing to stick together up to now despite their trust issues and how little they have come to believe that their relationship could actually work on the long run over the years, Leo was of course forced to put an end to his relationship with Cody. And he knew, instinctively, that the end had to be neat and final, because he knew in himself that if he had left a crack open for Cody, Cody would’ve slithered back inside him, even without wanting it, or without doing it on purpose. They were connected much deeper than Leo thought they could be – much deeper than he thought he could be connected with anyone else who wasn’t Blaine – and breaking up had been hell. Cody, with all his fragility and his strength, had taken it with dignity. Leo remembers Cody did not show himself in tears, not even once. His eyes grew dark, when they said goodbye, and looking down, with the tiniest, most breakable voice, he had said “I loved you”.

Leo should’ve answered “I still do”, because that was how he felt back then, but he knew it would’ve been a mistake. Cody only would’ve needed a crack. He would’ve slithered back in. So, instead, he just said “I’m sorry”, and that was it.

He had to be thankful for the fact that Blaine decided to take him on a trip around the world, right after they got back together, because he honestly has no idea what would’ve happened if he had remained in Lima. Adam, who remained friend with Cody for some time after Cody and Leo’s break up, told Leo that for the first few weeks he was inconsolable, that he stopped attending college, he stopped seeing his friends. And then, one day, he left. He said he was planning to go and stay a while in Italy, with friends of his mom, who was actually Italian, and as far as Adam knows, and therefore as far as he told Leo, he really did that.

Cody used to love chocolate so much. Leo remembers him so well, despite the years that have passed since he last saw him. He can remember his tiny, delicate fingers wrapped around a cookie, the tiny bites he took from it to make sure it lasted as long as possible. He had a stash of chocolate snacks hidden in the first drawer of his nightstand, at all times. Leo always used to wonder how could someone who ate so much junk food look like Cody did – soft in the right places, but lithe and small overall, his skin without the slightest imperfection, never a red spot on him.

He looked like he was made of porcelain, and Leo often thought he actually was. Whenever he starts thinking about him, which is a thing that happens more often than it probably should, Leo always ends up offering a little random prayer to whatever deity up there might be listening, to make sure he’s alright, wherever he is right now.

He gets his chocolate covered cookie, anyway, and while he’s savoring it in the kitchen he hears a strange noise coming from downstairs. It sounds like water, but it makes no sense. The kids should all be sleeping right now.

He washes his hand and then he walks upstairs, heading straight for the bathroom, but the lights are off and the taps are all closed. He can still see the sound of flowing water, though, and so he walks in the direction of Timmy’s room, trying to understand if it’s him who’s having a late night shower. Except the closer he gets to Timmy’s room – and the farther he gets from his own bedroom – the fainter the water sound becomes.

Alarmed, he turns around and runs to the master bedroom, and from there into its private bathroom. The light is on, and the water’s open, and the tub has been plugged and the water’s about to overflow its edge.

“Shit!” he gasps as he throws himself at the tap, turning it off. He’s panting and his heart is beating like crazy in his chest, its sound echoing in his ears with the rumble of his blood. How is this possible? Did he turn the water on and then forget? But it makes no sense – why would he have wanted to take a bath so late in the night, only to forget all about it?

Worried and more than a little confused, he reaches down into the water to unplug the tub, but as soon as his arm sinks in he feels something he never thought he’d feel in his whole life. Cold, water fingers wrap themselves around his wrist and pull him down, down, down into the abyss, and Leo plunges head-first into the overflowing tub, spilling water everywhere on the tiled floor, trying to hold onto the edge as the hand firmly holding him keeps tugging at him. And all around him, deep into the water, echoing in all the bubbles that his frenzied movements cause underneath the surface, the voice of the house repeats, _come_.

Leo screams underwater, he gasps, he coughs, and the hand lets him go. He pulls himself out with a breathless gasp and screams again, slithering away on the wet floor, pressing himself hard against the wall, as far as possible from the tub.

“Leo!” Timmy appears on the threshold in less than thirty seconds, breathing heavily, his blonde hair all ruffled up on his head. He opens his eyes wide as he looks at him, curled up on the floor, completely drenched, while the water flushes down the drain. “What happened here?!”

“There— There was someone,” Leo utters in a panic, “In the bathtub. Underwater. He grabbed me and pulled me down and tried to—”

“What?!” Timmy runs towards the tub, but of course he finds it empty. He turns back towards Leo, his eyes filled with concern. “Who… who was it?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see his face!” Leo shouts, pulling himself up from the floor, clinging to the sink not to slide back down, “But he pulled me down! Into the water! He tried to drown me!”

Timmy holds his breath and does nothing but stare at him for a little while. Leo knows he’s giving him time to calm down, replay what he just said in his head and correct himself. Which is a nice gesture that, once he actually calmed down, Leo appreciates.

“Leo…?”

“I mean…” he clears his throat, passing a hand through his wet hair to comb them off his face, “I… I thought I… I think I wanted to take a bath,” he tries to retell this story to give it some sort of sense. That’s a thing he’s used to do, as a writer. He takes senseless things and gives them a new shape, a new meaning, to make sense out of them. “But I must’ve fallen asleep while the tub was filling up. And as I slept I must’ve fallen into the water, and I probably ended up having some sort of weird nightmare about it while it was happening. Might have been my brain trying to make sense of the fact that I was suddenly underwater.”

That explains it all quite well, he thinks. If he ignores the fact that he did not turn the water on, he did not fall asleep, and he did feel a hand around his wrist, and a voice in his ears, telling him to come.

“Jesus…” Timmy sighs heavily, covering his face with both hands for a moment, “You gave me a heart attack. We’re lucky the twins didn’t wake up. Are you okay now…?”

“Yeah… I’m sorry, Timmy,” he apologizes sincerely, looking up at him with eyes a little lost.

“Don’t worry about it, don’t be silly, it happens…” Timmy offers him a patient smile, “Change into something dry before you get back to bed, though, you can’t sleep like that.”

“Sure,” Leo nods, happily accepting the suggestion. He needs to think about practical things. Taking off his wet clothes, changing into something else. Then dry the bathroom floor and get back to bed. “Thank you, T. T. Go back to sleep, I’ll fix this shit in here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” he plays it down with a short laughter, “Come on, it’s just water. I can manage. Besides, I did the damage, and I will clean it up. That’s how it works in this house, right?”

Timmy chuckles too, walking back out of the bathroom and carefully avoiding the puddles covering half the floor. “Okay, then. Call me if you need help.”

But Leo won’t call him – he needs to sort this out by himself. And so he methodically changes into a clean pajamas, he grabs a mop and he dries the bathroom floor until there’s not a single drop of water on it anymore. Then he slips back under the cover, even if he knows he’s not gonna sleep a minute for the rest of the night. He stares at the dark ceiling above him, breathing slowly in and out. “House,” he calls, “I asked you to speak to me, not to kill me.”

He’s not expecting anything else to happen, for tonight, and perhaps that’s the reason why what happens almost breaks him. He feels a hand, strong, powerful, icy cold and ruthless, wrap itself around his neck, crushing him against the pillow. And a voice, close and cruel and whispery and deadly, hisses into his ear, somewhere on his left, _you did the damage, but you didn’t clean it up. When are you gonna clear it up? When are you gonna clean it up? WHEN ARE YOU GONNA CLEAN IT UP?!_

Leo gasps loudly and sits up, breathing heavily in and out. He’s about to call Timmy with a scream, again, but then he thinks about the twins and he bites his own tongue. He doesn’t want to wake them up – he doesn’t even want to wake _him_ up, poor Timmy, he doesn’t deserve it. “Okay…” he says then, getting out of the bed. He’s shaking all over, he’s terrified, but he can’t stay in his bed, “Okay, tell me where you want me to go.”

The house directs him through the silence. A little nudge here, a little poke there. He finds himself in the empty room that’s going to become their guest room, at some point. There’s no bed there, but he knows this is where he should sleep. Uncertain but stubborn, he lies down on the floor and curls on himself, closing his eyes. The tiles are cold, but they warm up. There’s no whispering. The house doesn’t seem to want to kill him, if he stays in here, so that’s where he falls asleep.

He doesn’t notice the crack in the wall.

*

Blaine finds him on the floor early the morning after, when he comes back home. Leo comes up with an excuse about not being able to sleep in the bed, and Blaine pretends to believe him, and they don’t speak about it again. Leo has no idea how to tell Blaine about what happened, even the rationalized retelling he made for himself last night sounds stupid if he tries recounting it again now.

He decides it’s better to leave it all behind. Perhaps, he thinks, the house got angry at him because he attacked her and told her that her looks weren’t that good, after all. It’s not gonna happen again, he thinks. There are no chances it is ever going to happen again.

And for a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact, nothing happens. He sleeps through the night. He hears no voices. The bathroom behaves. And he keeps not noticing the crack in the wall of the future guest room, perhaps because they’re not working on decorating that room, yet, and no voice comes calling for him to spend any time in there.

Slowly, Leo starts looking back at what happened that night with a smile on his face. That was so silly, he tells himself, and he starts believing his own tale about falling asleep and into the tub and dreaming up a phantom assassin dwelling at the bottom of it. 

And then one night he wakes up again with the sound of flowing water.

He opens his eyes wide into the darkness, finding himself staring at the ceiling. Blaine’s sleeping soundly by his side and he seems to have noticed nothing, but the light is on in the bathroom and the water’s still flowing. Slowly, he sits up. His heart is beating so fast he fears it’s going to tear a hole through his ribcage, but he soldiers on. He slides off the bed and slowly walks into the bathroom. Once again, the tub has been plugged, and the water has almost reached its edge. He closes the tap to make sure the water doesn’t overflow, but this time he doesn’t try reaching down to unplug it. He swallows and looks down into the water. “Who are you…?” he hears himself ask, “And why do you so desperately need a bath?”

The water, so still up to a moment before, seems to ripple for a second, even if there are no drops falling into it. Leo frowns and leans in, trying to understand what might have caused the movement. But the moment he stares into the water, he gasps and forces himself to hold his breath not to scream as he pulls back, because right underneath the glossy water surface he spotted a face, a white, distant, desperate face, with glassy blue eyes staring back into his own. 

“What the fucks?!” he hisses breathlessly, a hand on his chest, as he tries to tame his heartbeat. That’s when he looks down and he notices the wet footprints moving from the tub and away towards the bedroom.

Mesmerized and terrorized, he starts following them. They go into the bedroom, but they don’t stop there. The bedroom door is open, just a crack, even though Leo’s sure it was closed before, and the footprints move past it and into the hallway. He keeps following. 

The footprints lead him into the guest room, but it is still empty. They move in a circle all over the room, as though the person who left them coasted the walls as he paced around. And there’s a wet trail covering the wall. Leo swallows and raises his arm, placing his hand on it. Yes, it is more or less at the same height it would be if he chose to walk in a circle around the room while touching the wall with his left hand. Perhaps a little lower than his hand would be, as though the person who left the footprints was a little bit shorter than him.

He walks around the room, following the wet trail, then he walks out of it. The footprints bring him to the stairs, and go down, and Leo keeps following. One step after another he walks down, down, down, and them, with his heart trapped in his throat, he looks up and he sees a figure standing in the middle of the kitchen. It looks like a boy – he’s completely naked, and drenched from head to toes. He looks porcelain white in the moonlight pouring in from the floor-to-ceiling glass door, and he keeps his arms a little wide apart from his body. Something’s dripping from the tip of his fingers to the floor. Leo thinks it might be water. Leo thinks it _must_ be water.

The boy’s facing away from him, outside, into the backyard, so Leo cannot recognize him. But when he speaks a hole opens in the middle of Leo’s chest, and he starts thinking that can’t be, that can’t be, that can’t _be_.

“You used to love cooking,” the boy says. Leo finally recognizes the whisper. The voice of the house. “Do you still love it? People stop loving so many things as they move on. Have you moved on? I tried moving on. Moving on hurts.”

Leo swallows hard, stepping off the stairs. He looks down at the footprints and he notices that’s not just water. It’s tinted red, a little less where he stands, but the stains gets progressively darker the close they get to the boy standing still in the middle of the room.

He gathers all his courage. He speaks his name. “Cody,” he says. He’s surprised at himself for not having turned that name into a question. It would’ve been sensible to ask if it was him, before taking for granted he would be. But deep inside he knows asking the question would’ve been useless. You don’t ask questions if you already knows the answers.

The boy seems to take a big breath. He hides his arms so Leo can’t see them anymore, but he can still hear the dripping. “I like this place,” he says, “I think I’m gonna stay.”

Leo moves closer to him, one step after the other. He thought he’d be more scared. He doesn’t feel scared, right now. “Cody,” he calls. He’s desperate to look at him, he wants Cody to turn so that he can see his face, and at the same time he’s terrified at the thought of what he might see. But he knows he must face it – like Blaine always says. Weird things happen, and you must face them. Or else they’ll keep haunting you. “Why are you here?”

Cody seems to scoff a little laughter. It’s a mean laughter, a sound Leo never remembers having heard coming from him. Cody was always so sweet. So sweet and so soft and so fragile. He’s hit by the notion that he should’ve done more to protect him. He should’ve done more to preserve what they had. Perhaps it couldn’t have remained the same things that they used to have before, but it could’ve turned into something else. Something he could’ve explained to Blaine, something Blaine might’ve been willing to understand.

But the truth is Leo didn’t want to bother working on it – because it would’ve taken an effort to do it. It would’ve taken an effort to morph their relationship into something acceptable for two people one of which would have been in love with someone else. It would’ve taken an effort to translate that kind of relationship into a language clear enough for Blaine to understand, and it would’ve taken an effort to convince Blaine it would’ve been necessary for him to accept Cody’s presence in Leo’s life if he had bothered to put up any kind of resistance against it.

Leo didn’t want to make that effort. Partly because he was scared Blaine would’ve used it as an excuse to run off again. And partly just because he didn’t want to work for it. 

“Why do you think?” Cody asks. And then he finally turns to look at him.

Those empty, glassy blue eyes are the ones Leo saw when he touched the kitchen isle on his first visit. They’re the same eyes he saw staring back at him from the bathtub. And Cody’s covered in blood and water, and despite the darkness in the kitchen Leo can see his slashed forearms, and the two twin gaping wounds that tear his flesh apart from his wrist up to his elbow.

He swallows. “Why…?” he asks, his voice weak as he stares at him, hundreds of memories waterfalling in his mind, Cody’s smiles when he woke up in the morning, his fear during the first few days of their relationship, the horror Leo had felt when Cody finally felt comfortable enough to share with him the horrible details of his last relationship with the psycho who tortured and left him to die in a bathtub the first time. And now he had turned into the psycho. He had left him to die in a bathtub for the second time, except this time no one found him, this time no one stopped him, this time no one saved him.

Cody shrugs, looking straight into his eyes. His cheeks used to be so puffy and pink, and now they look sunken and empty, like the rest of his body. He’s bones covered in leathery skin, covered in water, covered in blood. He shrugs, as though he didn’t have an answer, or didn’t care about giving him one, anyway. “Have you moved on, Leo?”

“Are you angry at me?”

“Yes.”

Leo swallows, staring at him, terrified. “Do you wanna kill me?”

Cody blinks a couple of time. “I want you in pain,” he says, “Death would be mercy. I don’t want mercy.”

Leo’s voice breaks as he starts crying. “I don’t know how this happened,” he says, “I had no idea… I don’t even know when… Cody, I— you have to believe me, I _never_ wanted to hurt you like this, I never even wanted to break up with you!”

And it’s the blink of an eye. One moment Cody’s feet away from him, standing next to the kitchen isle, and the following Leo opens his eyes again and Cody’s less than an inch away from him, and he smells rotten, and he smells angry, and he still smells like chocolate, and Leo feels like he’s going to faint. “Now you’ll never have to,” Cody says with the darkest voice.

And then he disappears.

*

He calls Adam the morning after, and he asks about Cody straight away, without wasting time on small talk. His best friend is taken aback by the question, and then he confesses with surprise that he was sure he would’ve never heard that name coming from his lips.

“Why are you asking?” he wants to know, and Leo feels like Adam probably deserves the truth, like Blaine and the kids probably do, but just like he didn’t tell Blaine anything about the voice and what happened he decides Adam won’t hear anything about him from him either.

“I just found myself thinking about him,” he says as he feels small hands on his back, and on his neck, and then a heavy panting and a hissing voice whispering liar, liar, liar. “Do you know if something happened to him?”

Adam tells him it’s weird that he’s asking right now, because no longer than a few weeks ago he spoke with a common friend who told him Cody had died. “He didn’t know why, this friend of mine, but he told me how.”

“He cut his own wrist,” Leo said, feeling the abyss wake up inside him, and icy cold claws climbing their way up his neck, “In a bathtub.”

Once again, Adam falls silent for a few seconds. “Who told you…?” he asks.

Leo swallows. The answer is: basically, himself. But he does not say it.

*

Often in his life, watching TV shows and movies and reading books on haunted houses, he wondered if it was possible to just get used to a haunting once you’re sure that’s what’s happening to you. Most stories centered around the topic usually end up with the destruction of the haunted house – it ends up in flames, or in wreckage, or the people inhabiting it just leave it behind, even when they know they have _something_ to do with what’s haunting it, when the haunting his made by an ex-lover, or a dead relative, or some other kind of related ghost.

Now, Leo’s situation, he reckons, is a little different. He knows it’s not the house that’s being haunted, but himself. He’s pretty sure Cody would follow him wherever he went. But even if there was a way to get rid of him, he doesn’t think he would do it.

It’s funny, but he finds himself searching for him on every reflecting surface. Glasses, marble, water. He looks for his eyes and he hopes to see them, and when he sees them he doesn’t feel scared. He reaches out for the reflection, wondering if one day Cody might let him touch him, but it never happens. It’s always Cody the one who does the touching. When Leo’s alone somewhere, more often than not he can feel his fingers on his skin, or between his curls, scratching his scalp, sometimes delicately, sometimes a little angrily. When he’s in bed, next to Blaine, and he hugs his husband, there’s always someone else hugging him from behind. When he’s having a shower, he is never alone. There are fingers and there are nails and there are teeth. And sometimes there’s more of that. Sometimes Cody stops being angry for a moment, and he becomes warm, and he becomes hungry, and even though he’s always fucking scary Leo has learned how to take him. Whenever that happens, he just closes his eyes and he lets him come as close as he wants. He doesn’t raise his hands because he knows Cody would bite and run away, but he allows him to move freely, and Cody glues himself to him, and moves against him, and Leo can hear the whispering underneath the water tapping against the bottom of the tub, and he can see the shape of an invisible body right in front of him. That’s when it feels nice. It doesn’t happen often, but that’s when it feels nice.

Cody speaks to him often. No one else hears him, but he does. He whispers to him, sometimes so loud and unfiltered and aggressive Leo feels himself on the verge of going mad. He just gives him bits and pieces, but there are other times, especially at night, when Leo wakes up and manages to follow the trail of him, and once he finds him he can see him, curled up somewhere or standing somewhere else, looking at the moon or staring at some irrelevant details on the wall. That’s when they really talk.

Cody tells him about leaving. About arriving to Italy to escape loneliness and just finding more loneliness. He tells him about trying hard to find something to care for, a job, friends, a lover, but nothing seemed to be worth the effort. “We were worth the effort,” Cody says tonight, six months after this whole thing started.

Leo nods. “I didn’t know it, back then,” he confesses, “But I know now.”

And Cody looks up at him, and his eyes are empty and there’s only water behind them, but the water’s agitated and it can _feel_ , Leo knows that it can feel. “You did the damage.”

“And I never cleaned it up,” Leo nods, “But I want to do it now.”

“It’s too late.”

And Leo knows he has to insist. “Let me try anyway,” he says.

Cody keeps looking at him, now sadder than he’s angry. “What if it doesn’t work?” he asks, “And what do you expect to happen if it works, instead? You expect me to disappear?”

“I don’t want you to disappear,” Leo says, shaking his head, “I… I deserve this, sweetness,” he says, using the same nickname he used to use with him back in college. Cody winces in pain, but he takes it with his usual strength, which hasn’t even chipped, despite death. “I want you to be with me forever. Please, promise you will be with me forever.”

Cody seems to consider his words. His eyes look a little bit more alive, for a moment. Then he stands up, and he holds his hand out for Leo. 

For a second, Leo holds his breath. This has never happened before – Cody’s always touching, but he’s never inviting Leo to touch him back. Hesitantly, Leo reaches out for him and covers his tiny hand with his own, squeezing it softly. It feels bony and cold, but he can recognize the shape of Cody’s hand against his palm, the memory of it, once buried inside his mind, coming back to him just like Cody came back to him.

Cody guides him upstairs, surprisingly into the guest room, which is still empty – and suddenly Leo starts asking himself why it still is. Six months since they’ve moved into this house, no one ever tried to say it might be time to put some furniture inside. The room is the same as it was when they first moved in, empty and lonely.

“Why here…?” Leo asks in a shallow breath. 

Cody guides him to the wall. He points the fingers, and Leo can finally see the crack. 

“I just needed one,” Cody says in a whisper. Leo knows it’s true. That’s what Leo always feared, that’s why he pushed Cody away as soon as he broke up with him, because he always knew a crack would be all Cody might have needed to just hop back into his heart and nest there.

Leo nods slowly. “I will never cover it up,” he promises, “And this room will remain empty.”

“No,” Cody shakes his head, “I wanted it empty because… because I wanted you to feel the void. I wanted you to walk past this door and know that there was a part of yourself that was me and that would always feel like this. But…” his voice breaks a little, and Leo hears him sobbing, and his heart shrinks to the size of speck of dust. “… but I think I want a bed, now.”

Leo closes his eyes and starts crying, as he feels him fade away.

*

He starts working on decorations for the room the morning after. He demands to be in charge of the whole thing – he buys furniture, mirrors, many more mirrors than the room needs, and prints to hang, by artists Cody might’ve liked. He tries a few, some of them mysteriously fall to the floor and break, and that’s how he knows he has to change them. In a month or so, no other print falls down and he knows Cody likes them all. Blaine notices the crack, of course, during renovations, and he asks if he might want to give the whole room a fresh hand of paint to cover it, but Leo firmly declines.

He starts feeling him less and less around the house. Cody doesn’t follow him around, he stops using the bathroom, he stops invading the kitchen. But his presence is strong in the guest room, even though no one else seems to feel him. And whenever Leo wants to spend some time with him, that’s where he comes. He even comes work in here, when he knows he’s got deadlines to meet but he still needs to be close to him.

The rest of his life remains the same: he sleeps with his husband, he cares for his children, he works, he goes out, he meets with his friends. But roughly once a month, he spends the night in here. He sleeps alone in the bed, or at least that’s what Blaine thinks, even though he doesn’t ask. He makes up excuses, like having to work late into the night and not wanting to disturb Blaine by climbing into the bed at 3 AM, but the truth is he comes in here to sleep with the ghost of Cody, who nestles by his side and curls around him and scratches him with claws that are becoming shorter and softer every day.

He’s still here by the time they celebrate their first anniversary in this house (as Blaine uses to say, Leo’s very expensive and lengthy first date paid off, in the end). And when Leo walks into the guest room and sees his reflection into every single mirror and framed poster he hanged on the wall, he sees his cruel smile turning a little softer, and he takes comfort in the knowledge that he will never leave.

**Author's Note:**

> It is never fun to kill Cody off, but it is always interesting.
> 
> This story was written for the third week of COWT #11 @ landedifandom.net  
> Prompt: M4, exploring a haunted house


End file.
